10gb or more 1gb ports

Networking
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Hey guys!

So I’ve been working on upgrading my home network over the last few weeks to help me get some hands-on experience with networking, ACLs, firewalls etc. I bought myself a fancy HP T730 on ebay with a 2 port 1gb nic already installed and have loaded it up with OPNsense to replace the horrid Orbi mesh wifi router I found out in the trash several years ago. I plan to run the Orbi as a wireless access point and just have the T730 handle all the routing with the help of a cheap 8 port TP-Link “managed” switch.

Now that I have had all the pieces together and have been playing around with them I find myself wanting more. Maybe a 4 port 1gb nic in the firewall/router so I can run WAN, LAN and two ports for LAGG, or maybe a 2 port 10gb nic with a nicer switch?

What are your guys thoughts, or maybe ya’ll have some recommendations?

I should add that I’m moving from Optimum 200mbps to Verizon 1gbps at the end of the month.

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At work our firewalls use either one or two redundant 10g ports to the backhaul switch and the firewall playing the part of router between the VLANs. We put WAN on the firewall rather than on a VLAN on the switch. This is a pretty common business setup and what I recommend you do if you’re wanting to learn. It also simplifies management as you can add/modify your VLANs on the fly rather than running new cable for network segments. L2 switches are pretty cheap, so are dual 10g cards on ebay.

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Hey! Thanks you for your reply!

I went ahead and got a I350T4 card to throw into my OPNsense router and can move the card that’s in it to my Proxmox server. I’m trying to hunt down a used switch on ebay that’ll support VLANS and LACP for cheap. I’ll probably wait on 10g until I have a better grasp on the basics and can throw more money at it.

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Less ports less cable to run

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